Confronted by his truculent backbenchers and Labour's stubborn poll lead, it is not hard to see why David Cameron is reportedly considering the dramatic step of ruling out a second coalition with the Lib Dems after May 2015. Such a pledge would reassure those Tory MPs who have long suspected that he prefers governing with Nick Clegg's party to governing alone, and would allow Cameron to make a fresh appeal to an electorate increasingly hostile to hung parliaments (a recent MORI poll found that 65 per cent believe they are bad for the country). When Lord Ashcroft asked voters to rank their preferred outcomes in 2012, just 13 per cent said they would like to see another Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, compared to 31 per cent for a Conservative government, 20 per cent for a Labour-Lib Dem coalition and 36 per cent for a Labour government.

A promise to avoid another coalition would enhance what Tim Montgomerie has called the Tories' "butterfly moment": the moment they decouple from the Lib Dems and fly in search of a majority. As he wrote in 2012:

There are many drawbacks of Coalition government but there is one enormous advantage.

At the next election – for the first time since World War II – the government will not be up for re-election. Neither of the two parties in the current government can run away from what the Coalition has achieved or failed to achieve but both parties can credibly say that people haven’t had a Conservative or Liberal Democrat government. As one of the two bigger parties in British politics this opportunity is obviously more important for the Conservatives than the Lib Dems. David Cameron will be able to appear before the British electorate and urge them to give him the chance to govern alone for the first time.

David Cameron’s team should prepare carefully for this coalition caterpillar to Tory butterfly moment. It is an opportunity for a fundamental relaunch. An opportunity to describe how a Conservative-only government will be superior to continuing coalition government and to the Labour alternative. The relaunch needs to convey strength. Strength to deliver the bold economic reforms Britain needs and strength to protect Britain’s social contract. Stronger than coalition government with all of its inherent tensions and stronger than a Labour government led by Ed Miliband. Getting this butterfly moment right – making it a big event – is huge for the Conservative chances at the next election.

One factor that has been largely overlooked this morning is the effect such a pledge would have on Labour. A formal promise by Cameron to avoid entering a coalition would immediately lead to pressure from the media and Labour tribalists for Ed Miliband to do the same. While Miliband has emphasised again in the last week that he is fighting for a majority (not least because, as the polls suggest, he has a good chance of achieving one), he has refused to rule out forming a coalition with the Lib Dems. Given the precedent set by May 2010, and the dictum that it is never wise to rule anything out in politics, this has been viewed as the right decision.

But a pledge by Cameron to govern alone, if the Tories are the largest party after May 2015, would sharpen the dilemma. The PM would seek to portray Labour as "weak" for refusing to rule out working with the Lib Dems (although this would rather undermine his attempt to promote the coalition's record) and would appeal to voters to deliver a "strong" Conservative government. If the polls are tight, it is a message that could resonate. The hope in Labour is that the party will have a large enough lead to be confident of winning a majority, but Cameron's latest gambit will force Miliband's party to re-evaluate its strategy.

As for the Lib Dems, their plan to appeal for another term in government, to ensure both a "strong economy" (which Labour, they say, cannot be trusted to deliver) and a "fair society" (which the Tories cannot guarantee) would be destroyed if both parties ruled out forming coalitions in favour of governing alone (perhaps pursuing "the Wilson option" of a second election in the same year). But it is worth bearing in mind what one Liberal Democrat recently described to me as "the nuclear option" of bringing down a minority administration by refusing to support its first Queen's Speech (discussed by Mark Thompson on The Staggers). Whether such an outcome would do more harm to the Lib Dems or to the governing party is another calculation all sides will have to make in advance of May 2015.

P.S. Here, incidentally, is what a spokesperson for Lib Dem president Tim Farron told The Staggers:

This just makes him [Cameron] seem desperate. I wonder if this pledge is another 'cast iron guarantee' from him? I think rather than political positioning and working to shore up his vote, he should get on with running the country. That is what Tim and his Liberal Democrat colleagues plan to do. We should leave future coalitions to the voters and see what electoral arithmetic they give us in 2015.

The Brexit Beartraps, #2: Could dropping out of the open skies agreement cancel your holiday?

So what is it this time, eh? Brexit is going to wipe out every banana planet on the entire planet? Brexit will get the Last Night of the Proms cancelled? Brexit will bring about World War Three?

To be honest, I think we’re pretty well covered already on that last score, but no, this week it’s nothing so terrifying. It’s just that Brexit might get your holiday cancelled.

What are you blithering about now?

Well, only if you want to holiday in Europe, I suppose. If you’re going to Blackpool you’ll be fine. Or Pakistan, according to some people...

You’re making this up.

I’m honestly not, though we can’t entirely rule out the possibility somebody is. Last month Michael O’Leary, the Ryanair boss who attracts headlines the way certain other things attract flies, warned that, “There is a real prospect... that there are going to be no flights between the UK and Europe for a period of weeks, months beyond March 2019... We will be cancelling people’s holidays for summer of 2019.”

He’s just trying to block Brexit, the bloody saboteur.

Well, yes, he’s been quite explicit about that, and says we should just ignore the referendum result. Honestly, he’s so Remainiac he makes me look like Dan Hannan.

But he’s not wrong that there are issues: please fasten your seatbelt, and brace yourself for some turbulence.

Not so long ago, aviation was a very national sort of a business: many of the big airports were owned by nation states, and the airline industry was dominated by the state-backed national flag carriers (British Airways, Air France and so on). Since governments set airline regulations too, that meant those airlines were given all sorts of competitive advantages in their own country, and pretty much everyone faced barriers to entry in others.

The EU changed all that. Since 1994, the European Single Aviation Market (ESAM) has allowed free movement of people and cargo; established common rules over safety, security, the environment and so on; and ensured fair competition between European airlines. It also means that an AOC – an Air Operator Certificate, the bit of paper an airline needs to fly – from any European country would be enough to operate in all of them.

Do we really need all these acronyms?

No, alas, we need more of them. There’s also ECAA, the European Common Aviation Area – that’s the area ESAM covers; basically, ESAM is the aviation bit of the single market, and ECAA the aviation bit of the European Economic Area, or EEA. Then there’s ESAA, the European Aviation Safety Agency, which regulates, well, you can probably guess what it regulates to be honest.

All this may sound a bit dry-

It is.

-it is a bit dry, yes. But it’s also the thing that made it much easier to travel around Europe. It made the European aviation industry much more competitive, which is where the whole cheap flights thing came from.

In a speech last December, Andrew Haines, the boss of Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority said that, since 2000, the number of destinations served from UK airports has doubled; since 1993, fares have dropped by a third. Which is brilliant.

Brexit, though, means we’re probably going to have to pull out of these arrangements.

Stop talking Britain down.

Don’t tell me, tell Brexit secretary David Davis. To monitor and enforce all these international agreements, you need an international court system. That’s the European Court of Justice, which ministers have repeatedly made clear that we’re leaving.

So: last March, when Davis was asked by a select committee whether the open skies system would persist, he replied: “One would presume that would not apply to us” – although he promised he’d fight for a successor, which is very reassuring.

We can always holiday elsewhere.

Perhaps you can – O’Leary also claimed (I’m still not making this up) that a senior Brexit minister had told him that lost European airline traffic could be made up for through a bilateral agreement with Pakistan. Which seems a bit optimistic to me, but what do I know.

Intercontinental flights are still likely to be more difficult, though. Since 2007, flights between Europe and the US have operated under a separate open skies agreement, and leaving the EU means we’re we’re about to fall out of that, too.

Surely we’ll just revert to whatever rules there were before.

Apparently not. Airlines for America – a trade body for... well, you can probably guess that, too – has pointed out that, if we do, there are no historic rules to fall back on: there’s no aviation equivalent of the WTO.

The claim that flights are going to just stop is definitely a worst case scenario: in practice, we can probably negotiate a bunch of new agreements. But we’re already negotiating a lot of other things, and we’re on a deadline, so we’re tight for time.

In fact, we’re really tight for time. Airlines for America has also argued that – because so many tickets are sold a year or more in advance – airlines really need a new deal in place by March 2018, if they’re to have faith they can keep flying. So it’s asking for aviation to be prioritised in negotiations.

The only problem is, we can’t negotiate anything else until the EU decides we’ve made enough progress on the divorce bill and the rights of EU nationals. And the clock’s ticking.

This is just remoaning. Brexit will set us free.

A little bit, maybe. CAA’s Haines has also said he believes “talk of significant retrenchment is very much over-stated, and Brexit offers potential opportunities in other areas”. Falling out of Europe means falling out of European ownership rules, so itcould bring foreign capital into the UK aviation industry (assuming anyone still wants to invest, of course). It would also mean more flexibility on “slot rules”, by which airports have to hand out landing times, and which are I gather a source of some contention at the moment.

But Haines also pointed out that the UK has been one of the most influential contributors to European aviation regulations: leaving the European system will mean we lose that influence. And let’s not forget that it was European law that gave passengers the right to redress when things go wrong: if you’ve ever had a refund after long delays, you’ve got the EU to thank.

So: the planes may not stop flying. But the UK will have less influence over the future of aviation; passengers might have fewer consumer rights; and while it’s not clear that Brexit will mean vastly fewer flights, it’s hard to see how it will mean more, so between that and the slide in sterling, prices are likely to rise, too.

It’s not that Brexit is inevitably going to mean disaster. It’s just that it’ll take a lot of effort for very little obvious reward. Which is becoming something of a theme.

Still, we’ll be free of those bureaucrats at the ECJ, won’t be?

This’ll be a great comfort when we’re all holidaying in Grimsby.

Jonn Elledge edits the New Statesman's sister site CityMetric, and writes for the NS about subjects including politics, history and Brexit. You can find him on Twitter or Facebook.